Jerry E. Smith and The Loch Ness Monster! This photo of Jerry E. Smith and a replica of the monster was taken at the Loch Ness Visitor Center in the famous village of Drumnadrochit on the banks of Loch Ness, Scotland, by David Hatcher Childress on May 12, 2008.

Jerry E. Smith was born on April 8, 1950 in Pomona, California, and died at 3:00 am on the morning of Monday, March 8, 2010, of pancreatic carcinoma (pancreatic cancer), I was informed by Kenn Thomas, editor of Steamshovel Press, moments ago. Smith was an author, lecturer and editor on unexplained phenomena, but sometimes remained behind the scenes in recent years, as a ghostwriter.

Interests that had him ranging from Loch Ness to Burning Man, the well-known writer to a select few was a true friend to many in the field of unsolved mysteries.

In recent years, Smith had operated out of the World Explorer’s Club in Kempton, Illinois where he worked for Adventures Unlimited Press as the Vice President for Marketing and Public Relations.

Smith’s acknowledged bibliography of published works includes three books from Adventures Unlimited Press (AUP), scores of non-fiction articles and reviews, and more than a dozen ghost-written books.

Smith began his career in writing and publishing in the little magazine field in 1966, writing and publishing his own amateur sci-fi fan magazine (called a fanzine or just “zine”) in the Valley Science Fiction Associations’ Valley Amateur Press Alliance (ValAPA) of Pomona, California. He was active in the zine scene throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s, appearing regularly in zines and APAs, like the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society’s APA-L, and culminating with his founding of the Unicorn Society and its Unicorn Amateur Press Alliance (UnAPA) in Klamath Falls, Oregon, in 1974.

Some of Jerry Smith’s happiest moments were at Burning Man in Nevada, where he had years ago lost his best friend Jim Keith (shown below), in a strange “accident” in 1999. Above are photos of Smith at Burning Man in 2009 and earlier.

As the close friend and literary partner of the late Jim Keith (author of Mind Control, World Control, and many others), Smith was often involved with projects with Keith. Jim Keith was Jerry Smith’s best friend from high school until his untimely death in 1999. Among their many projects together, they ran the regional newspaper Skyline: Klamath Falls; and co-hosted a radio show broadcasting from the campus of the Oregon Institute of Technology. Smith helped on several of Keith’s books, particularly Black Helicopters Over America: Strikeforce for the New World Order and Secret And Suppressed: Banned Ideas & Hidden History.

In 1990 Jerry Smith and Jim Keith founded the National UFO Museum (NUFOM) in Reno, Nevada. Smith worked as the Executive Director, while Keith acted as the Chairman of the Board. In addition to his administrative duties of running the day-to-day operations of NUFOM, Smith also edited and wrote for that organization’s quarterly journal, Notes from the Hangar. At the same time Smith worked as an editor/graphic artist with Keith’s magazine Dharma Combat: The Magazine of Spirituality, Reality and Other Conspiracies, where Smith served variously as Managing Editor and Art Director from its inception in 1988 until Keith’s death.

Smith’s first book from AUP was HAARP: The Ultimate Weapon of the Conspiracy, which considered conspiracy theories connected to the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP). The book, published in 1998, has been described as “blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction” by detractors, and as “comprehensive and erudite” by other reviewers. While the author admited that his work is speculative, he also contended that it was not intended to explain how HAARP works, but rather to summarize the many claims made about HAARP on the Internet and to analyze their validity. Smith focused on two major points: the United Nations’ Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Use of Environmental Modification Techniques and mind control. After giving a brief history of each he then speculated on whether these technologies were being developed, at HAARP or elsewhere, and if so, in furtherance of whose agenda.

Smith’s second book, published in 2005, was about the so-called Spear of Destiny, and focused on Nazi occultism and urban legends about a Nazi base in Antarctica.

His third book for AUP, published at the end of 2006, Weather Warfare and covered the history of weather modification from the “rainmakers” of the 1890s through the development of cloud seeding in the middle of the 20th century, including today’s suspected ability to manipulate hurricanes. Smith believed that the refusal of the mainstream scientific community to believe that terrorists and/or the military are capable of, and currently engaged in intentional manipulation of the environment skews the data in the global warming debate.

For the last dozen years or so, until his cancer slowed him down in 2009, Smith had maintained an exhausting schedule, appearing regularly on TV and radio, as well as speaking at seminars and conferences across the US and around the world.

Since HAARP‘s North American release in 1998 it has been translated into Portuguese, in 2005, by Editora Aleph of São Paulo, Brazil as ARMAS ELETROMAGNÉTICAS: seria o projeto Haarp a próxima ameaça mundial? and in 2001 into Polish by Amber Supermedia http://www.amber.sm.pl/ as HAARP BRON OSTATECZNA.

–, and George Piccard. Secrets Of The Holy Lance: The Spear of Destiny in History & Legend. Kempton, Il.: Adventures Unlimited, 2005.

The Universal Seduction Vol. 3: Piercing the Veils of Deception – Volume 3, by “Angelico Tapestra–The Collective” (an anthology, the name “Angelico Tapestra” represents a group of collective writers comprised of “world recognized authors, investigative journalists, mathematicians, engineers, scientists, and scholars.” Smith was one of the authors featured in this volume with his article “The End Of The World” which was a portion of a chapter edited out of HAARP). BookSurge Publishing, 2004.

“Weather Goes To War.” Atlantis Rising, #65, September/October 2007 [Originally published in somewhat different form in Steamshovel Times: Connecting The Dots on May 8, 2007, and the same week in the English online journal Conspiracy Times.

Co-authored with George Piccard: “Exploring The Antarctic Reich: The Final Secret of the Holy Lance.” World Explorer. Vol. 4, #4, 2006

About Loren ColemanLoren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.